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look, here are ferns growing-edible roots.
- [Eats a little.]
- 'Twould be fitter food for an animal-
- but the text says: Bridle the natural man!
- Furthermore it is written: The proud shall be humbled,
- and whoso abaseth himself, exalted.
- [Uneasily.]
- Exalted? Yes, that's what will happen with me;-
- no other result can so much as be thought of.
- Fate will assist me away from this place,
- and arrange matters so that I get a fresh start.
- This is only a trial; deliverance will follow,-
- if only the Lord lets me keep my health.
[Dismisses his misgivings, lights a cigar, stretches himself, and gazes out over the desert.]
- What an enormous, limitless waste!-
- Far in the distance an ostrich is striding.-
- What can one fancy was really God's
- meaning in all of this voidness and deadness?
- This desert, bereft of all sources of life;
- this burnt-up cinder, that profits no one;
- this patch of the world, that for ever lies fallow;
- this corpse, that never, since earth's creation,
- has brought its Maker so much as thanks,-
- why was it created?-How spendthrift is Nature!-
- Is that sea in the east there, that dazzling expanse
- all gleaming? It can't be; 'tis but a mirage.
- The sea's to the west; it lies piled up behind me,
- dammed out from the desert by a sloping ridge.
- [A thought flashes through his mind.]
- Dammed out? Then I could-? The ridge is narrow.
